A planned joint meeting between the Ukiah City Council and Planning Commission on hillside building regulations Wednesday disassembled into a commission-led public forum when a quorum of council members could not be achieved.

With Councilmember Doug Crane excusing himself due to land owned in the hillside zone, Mayor Mark Ashiku still waiting for legal word on whether his brother”s ownership precludes him from participating and Councilmember Mari Rodin unable to attend because of a family illness, the evening”s policy-making hopes were dashed.

But the sheer volume of public comments seemed to make the session worthwhile. About half of the 50-plus in attendance at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center took to the microphone — and even with no pending applications for the Western Hills at this time — a sense of urgency was common.

The city recently allowed Ismael Ceja to build on the five-lot Hull-Piffero subdivision, an approval that used the draft regulations as a guide, Ukiah Planning and Building Director Charley Stump said. He noted that even if the proposed new regulations — the product of a decades-long series of commission workshops — were approved previous to the Ceja proposal, the end result would have been the same.

At the end of the evening, several planning commissioners expressed a desire to hold a true joint meeting with the City Council to raise questions and directly exchange points of view. Councilmembers Phil Baldwin and John McCowen, invited to sit with the commission on the dais — gave general consent to the notion but were unable to provide official direction.?

Following another joint meeting, should one occur, the Planning Commission would consider the draft regulations and make a final recommendation to the City Council. The City Council would then hold a public hearing, following which it could adopt the new regulations.

During Wednesday night”s forum, however, comments spanned a few varied topics. One of the greatest areas of concern centered on the possible development of public hiking trails on private property. City officials later noted that such a direction cannot be accomplished via the hillside regulations in question. Draft language does include a provision stating that “(p)ublic pedestrian right-of-ways/walkways may be required?” but it was pointed out that the still-theoretical policy would only apply to new subdivisions.

Some residents demanded proof that these trails would be used by the public to merit their policing and cleaning, while another camp suggested that the innate educational purpose of trails trumps all.

Many property owners worried about litter, liability and fire danger from dropped cigarette butts. At least one speaker suggested the city should purchase the necessary land if public hiking trails are desired — a position similar to direction from Ukiah”s Paths, Open Space and Creeks Commission.

Fire concerns took center stage. Some cited fire hazard as reason to prevent public access, while others maintained fire danger was reason enough to limit the amount of development.

Many property owners fretted over the proposed requirements for technical reports, specifically soils engineering, and requested that hired professionals be allowed to determine what is required, and not city staff. Potentially prohibitive costs were cited by a few, including Phil Ashiku, who maintained that the draft regulations were shaped expressly to make the process too expensive. (A member of the public, who helped draft the proposed requirements, defended them as a “standard of practice” in the state.)

Other issues tackled included:

? A discussion of the proposed Upper and Lower Hillside zones, which saw some apparent consensus that the higher elevation did create a greater visual impact;

? The draft regulations” placing no limit on the number of accessory structures, like garages and sleeping rooms, that could be developed (although they cannot be larger than 500 square feet); and

? The city”s ability to dictate the design, lighting and fencing of new homes.

A few residents brought up a mass e-mail penned by Eric Crane to all hillside property owners, in which he called for the draft to be “thrown out.” Crane, who sat with his father in the audience, told the Planning Commission and the pair of council members, that the draft was “perverted” and a “mishmash of special interests.” He called for officials to start again with a blank sheet of paper, a request that seemed to surprise a few attendees. He offered examples of perceived contradictions within the document and offered to provide more at a later setting.